Parliamentary politics taking roots: Ayaz

ISLAMABAD - Speaker National Assembly Sardar Ayaz Sadiq has said that parliamentary politics is taking roots in the country and the incumbent government has come into power through a peaceful transition from one government to the other.Addressing the inaugural session of the 17th Speakers Conference here at Parliament House on Sunday evening, Sardar Ayaz Sadiq said that it was the military dictator Gen (Retd) Pervez Musharraf who had brought the mainstream political parties closer in the joint struggle for restoration of the democratic order in the country.He further said that politicians had come of age and they were all united for strengthening of democratic norms and values and the smooth transfer of power from one government to the other was witness to it. It was due to this maturity that despite having reservations over the elections results no political party had given any statement, which could harm the democratic order in the country.After the passage of 18th constitutional amendment, which is no doubt a great achievement of the parliamentarians, the provinces have secured greater autonomy and now with governments of different political parties in all the four provinces it is to see how these governments work with the federal government, he said.Highlighting the importance of speaker and deputy speaker in the parliamentary system, Sadiq said that they had tried to uphold their neutrality in running the house and that was the reason in the first parliamentary year, which was near to its culmination, he had given double the time to the opposition members to reflect on various matters brought before the house for debate.He further said that before 2008 the ‘private member bill’ was not given due importance but in the previous assembly for the first time government had not only given due importance to the private member’s bills but also did legislation on some of those bills. He further said that the present government was also following the same policy and according due importance to the bills introduced by the members in their personal capacity.Sadiq further announced to discourage the practice of bringing in people from other departments on deputation in the National Assembly Secretariat and assured that in future preference would be given to its own employees while making promotions and in case of fresh recruitments, they would be made through public service commission in transparent fashion.The speaker National Assembly said that they were also making efforts to fully computerise the record of the NA proceedings and the speeches of the MPs while a comprehensive plan was also under way to bring the NA Secretariat on solar energy and in this connection negotiations with a Chinese company were in progress.He also suggested formation of association of parliamentarians to provide a platform to the sitting and former MPs to get together at least once in a year.Terming the standing committees as eyes and ears of the parliament, Sadiq said that these committees served as backbone in the working of the parliament and provided sound foundation for quality functioning of the parliament and legislation.

This news was published in The Nation newspaper. Read complete newspaper of 14-Apr-2014 here.